Specialized forms of autobiography

These might roughly be grouped under four heads: thematic, religious, intellectual, and fictionalized. The first grouping includes books with such diverse purposes as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1924), The Americanization of Edward Bok (1920), and Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940). Religious autobiography claims a number of great works, ranging from the Confessions of St. Augustine and Peter Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum (The Story of My Misfortunes) in the Middle Ages to the autobiographical chapters of Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (“The Everlasting No,” “Centre of Indifference,” “The Everlasting Yea”) and John Henry Cardinal Newman’s beautifully wrought Apologia ... (100 of 10,110 words)